Fairly interesting origin story for this one. I'm going through a pretty rigorous training pipeline right now. In one way that's good because the fact that they actually bothered to start up a license class for control room supervisors means that somebody believes that this reactor will actually stay open. That's a certain kind of hope I suppose. In any case, lots of class time means I can't take vacation. That killed plans to attend FAU, DenFur, Eurofurence, or any of the other weirdly abundant furry cons that all happened on that same weekend. One thing I did happen to look up though, was that my recent move brought me within fair reach of Indy Fur Con, to which I'd never been but I'd heard at the very least that it existed. I only had the weekend, but one can still make something out of that with sufficient impetus. Having been there, I can confirm the rumors that IFC does in fact, exist.

It was a bit of an adventurous start on Friday but not for the worst reasons, really. It was just a matter of having undertaken crazy shenanigans of a different kind on Thursday. For a long time after I started this new job and got wind of the company's bankruptcy proceedings (two events that happened distressingly close to one another) I'd been hesitant to form connections here, knowing I might have to move again at any time. Not only is that practice is really lonely and thus of little help in a trying time, recently I've learned that it will at the very least be a year or so before they make the final no-but-actually-for-real call about pulling the plug on this power plant. That means that treating this like a temporary fluke is rather unsustainable, so I've started at the very least hanging out with my coworkers at the bar after work a day or two a week. It's been kind of nice. When we classed up they just threw together 14 people who were interested in licensing, so I'm getting a new crowd now and that time to unwind in the evening has been really nice for getting to know them.

The name of the nearest watering hole that we favor is "Porky's Pizza Trof". It even comes with an unnecessarily attractive waitress pig fursona on all their iconography. I'll have to get a picture of that sometime and put it up. Anyways, one of the things that came up now that I was regularly joining my contemporaries for a few drinks there was the idea that I could just bring my qualification manual along on these excursions. A majority of the class isn't composed of direct-hires like me, it's people moving up to supervisor from other positions in the company. Since those guys have worked there for a long time and qualified in other positions, they're allowed to sign knowledge checkouts in the new-hire familiarization manual that I've been having such trouble getting done all this time. I'm fairly sure that they were joking, but I've no compunction about ironically getting signatures in there. So yeah, I used my best Gru impression to say "Oh yes, haha! Is good joke yes, very funny. But actually though, we should actually do this for real, yes." When I took out the signature manual on Thursday everybody was just like "Oh holy shit you actually brought it?" and I triumphantly declared "Hell yeah! Let's get drunk and talk about condensate pumps!"

So yeah, we talked about a whole bunch of stuff. I got more done that night than I did in some entire weeks of just working on that manual. I think a big part of it was that those guys just respected the balls it took for me to ask under those circumstances, which may be more of what that manual is about rather than the actual systems knowledge. It was a fairly long night as a result of my work-related reasons for wanting that process to continue, but I think everybody had a good time. Nobody got really schwacked, we had work the next day after all, but it was definitely enough to disrupt my sleep appreciably that night. Awesome way to start a work day, and an even more awesome way to start a convention.

Naturally the way that I blearily flopped into bed Thursday night cut out all the prep work that I would ordinarily have done the night before departure. So when I got home Friday still feeling pretty tired and out of it, I rushed through that process. I figured my fursuit tote had everything I needed so I'd just roll with it. Time being fairly short for this excursion, I really didn't want to delay my departure. Turns out that I forgot my undershirts, glove liners, blowers, and a couple non-suiting things I really wish I had. Had to rough it for the weekend I guess!

I wondered a bit if I'd found the right place, but when I was parking and I saw a group of college-aged guys wearing video game and cartoon t-shirts I figured I was at least close. I ran into Kiba Youkai at the front door. She was hanging with Cryo Wolf at the time. Hadn't seen him in awhile. He's a bird now, and changed his name also, but damned if I can't remember the new one. Sorry Cryo! I guess you only get one chance with me. We caught up for awhile before they had to wander off. Unfortunately by then registration had closed, so it looked as though I was going to be in for a pretty quiet start as I wouldn't be allowed to do anything.

Just kidding. I used clever skullduggery and masterful stealth techniques to subterfuge my way into a couple events because coming to a furry con and NOT having fun is a thoroughly unacceptable course of events. The one time I couldn't shadow-jump past the guard I parleyed with "It's a charity event and I brought money." He accepted my terms. Man, if I were rich I'd be a truly unstoppable ninja assassin. Paying people to claim to not have seen you probably isn't as impressive though.

Anyways, the big sneak-in event of the night was the transformation writing panel. Hosts were my long-time favorite Serathin, Joshiah of the eponymous Joshiah's Written Works, and the lovely and charming Lykanos Wulfheart. We had a great time chatting back and forth about our various strange proclivities, as one does at such an event. I seemed to resonate quite a bit with Aaron Blackpaw, so I'll have to be sure to catch up with him again sometime. At one point I was mentioning the example of a wolf character being able to hear machinery noise that humans couldn't, and completely unprompted he asked "Are you talking about Freefall?" So I knew I had a kindred spirit there. Naturally we all got to have a little trip outside because of a fire alarm, the traditional inaugural song of the start of a furry con.

We actually managed to gather in the parking lot and still kinda chat about things a bit out there. Quite orderly, as furry fire fiascos go. They even pushed all the programming back a half-hour so that people would still have time to do their thing. After the panel I stuck around a bit with some interested parties, among them was Kezzism, who despite claiming that she doesn't usually chat people up, was also very fun to talk to. Anyways, there were a few things still going on in the night, but I was starting to feel at least a little bad about all the guards I had to bludgeon unconscious to get into things, so I figured I would stock up on a little more sleep for the journey ahead.

Except it turns out fuuuuuuck that because there was also a fire alarm at 7AM Saturday morning. Be sure to get an early start for your day of fun! You literally don't have a choice. Ah well. I kid, but it actually did make the earlier panels have like, crazy high attendance. The previous night I wasn't sure if I was going to make it to the ones that I wanted to, but thanks to the ever-looming threat of a deadly blaze that would consume us all I got to both of them. Bright sides, I guess! I went first to the donut panel by, Six I think? His name was listed as IIIIX, so that's what I'm going with. It was actually listed as a discussion panel and not just like a breakfast meet n greet social thing. I was dubious about us being able to spend an entire hour just talking about donuts, but apparently we can do that thing! Naturally since you can't talk about donuts without donuts around, there were several boxes of them from a local place. Long's Bakery I believe. They were quite good. That place has definitely earned all of the mouth-foaming praise that the locals always heap upon it. I shall have to journey there someday.

The other early-morning staple is the Milfurs panel. They always assume that military types like to get up early in the morning. Kinda off the mark in my case because I'd really much rather give that up. But I guess being forcibly shaken out of bed at an ungodly hour while terribly sleep-deprived put me in the proper military mood. There were just a couple of us there, but our host Furowulf Hagstrom did a good job keeping us all engaged. It's always nice to hear from Commander Kitsune of course, and a few others filtered in and out. I mentioned later on when I saw him that Furo and I happened to both be Kodipup suiters, so he added me to the Telegram chat of that particular demographic. Quite an unexpected and interesting development if I do say so myself!

There was a panel where you eat/discuss Oreos as well, but I'd already gotten to the point where my pancreas would never speak to me again, so I opted out. It was interesting to learn later though, that somehow eating cookies raised a not-insubstantial amount of charity dollars. Perhaps I should've stopped by to do my part then? I'll keep that in mind for next time around. Next up was the fursuit parade. It had been murderously humid that whole time and the air was mostly water, to the point that it just rained most of that day, chasing the parade inside. That was probably for the best, because even indoors with some semblance of climate management it was a sweaty, choking affair. I still really gave it my all though. Honorable mention on my death certificate will go to that cheetah behind me that was playing music on a little boombox the whole time. Because I mean like, if there's music playing and you're in a fursuit, you can't just like... NOT dance. It's impossible! So yeah, I danced all like 800 yards of the parade and caused my fursuit to gain like five pounds. Charming! Anyways, the parade led to my new Kodibrodi introducing me to Bloosh and we carried on for a bit. I was glad for the contact. Suiting really brought home how few people that I knew were there. Anyways, with my last remaining strength I thought I might at least TRY the out of doors, and even got to chat a bit with fellow orange thing Geomutt, so it was a worthy outing.

I managed to recover from my ordeal in time to catch Amateur Hour which played host to a handful of newer comedians on the furry scene. The big standout there was definitely Chris Da Comedy Rabbit. I can't find any links for him but he had a great set about a few subjects very near and dear to my heart, transformation being one of them, and he made fun of them in exactly the right way. It was really something! By that point I realized that the morning donuts had been the only thing I'd eaten all day, so I hit up Kiba for some food. I got to have some sushi with her friend whose name escapes me and also Quotation Marks. I was still really cruising at that point, but that came to a stop. Heh, it's been awhile since I've eaten a meal and then just plowed straight into near-unconsciousness. I guess it was just a few things catching up with me. There was still fun to be had though. I needed to have that fun!

Tough choice between the fursuit dance competition and the Dragget Show up next. I went with the latter because I've seen many dance comps but only like 0.4 Dragget Shows, and they also didn't have an elevated dancefloor in the main hall so if I didn't elbow-drop my way to a good seat at the dance comp I would've been also only seeing half of that performance. I'm happy with my decision to watch the Dragget Show though, as I can't even really describe just what the heck happened in there. Like, if you've ever really looked at the plot of Hamlet, it's hard to really get a grasp on. The best thing to give for context is that at one point the main character is kidnapped by pirates and it's like, not even that major of a plot point. Similarly, the show being attacked by Klingons and the host being presented with a fur-thong-draped disembodied mannequin crotch signed by the hotel staff were in fact, NOT the weirdest things to happen during the show. That's the best I can do. The rest of it really defies all logic or description.

Next up, was of course, the late-night sexy writing panel. It was the same crowd as the TF panel, more or less, but that was a good crowd and we were all elated for the chance to swear and talk about bumping uglies like we always wanted to anyways. I don't know why we bother NOT doing that! This panel was also one that somehow managed to raise charity money. I don't know how these guys do it! At the end of the convention they'd had something like 25 charity events, yet more than twice that many events submitted charity money. Crafty buggers, these ones. Anyways in this case the hook was that we could pay Joshiah or Serathin to tell embarrassing stories about themselves, which was an excellent challenge to be honest. I won't repeat the tales of interest here, not out of respect or anything, but because you guys didn't pay for any adorable rabbit wheelchairs in exchange for the privilege of hearing them, so this would basically be piracy of the worst kind, the kind that targets paralyzed rabbits!

Someone who called himself 'Firefox' recognized my CarryOn badge, which was neat. I chatted with him for awhile after the panel was over. I would've loved to get him to join the forum for the comic, but he said that he'd had enough bad experiences that he didn't want to chance it. Apparently we've got one of the much better-regulated comic boards over at the Cross Time Cafe, judging by the lawless thunderdomes that this guy encountered. I do hope I can find him again. His name was too generic to search and I gave him my handle but never took down any better identifiers for him. Here's hoping!

By then I had successfully done a dead, so I turned in, hoping to finally achieve that sleep thing I'd been hearing so much about. Given that I'd woken up at 6ish for 6ish days in a row though, my brain just went "so we're waking up at 6 right? That's the thing we're doing?" So there I was, shuffled unwittingly out of bed on a Sunday morning without even donuts to keep me company. Truly there is no greater injustice in this world. Since I had a bunch of time with nobody around I decided I'd work on a comedy act for the talent show that evening. Ordinarily there would be more planning that went into such a thing, but I had a couple hours to myself so I put something together. I figured I could take the engineering approach to preps and just drill my set a hundred times so that it's completely routine by the time I'm up there.

A lot of people don't know that's how pilots, astronauts, reactor operators and other high-pressure technical professionals train, because it makes a crisis so un-cinematic. The famously emotionless "Houston... we have a problem." in Apollo 13 was actually fairly true to life. In fact, when the real astronauts watched the footage they heard that pregnant pause in the middle of the phrase and were like "Wow, what a fucking drama queen. Quit chewing the scenery and start relaying some damage reports ya fuckin' prima donna!" So in reality, the mood of the room is even more flat and boring than that. You know how when you're bored you'll like, repeat a single word over and over again a hundred times until it barely even resembles a word anymore and it feels like you're just making funny sounds to amuse yourself? That's kind of what drilling a casualty scenario is like. You just repeat the same sequence over and over so many times that you exhaust all emotion that you could ever possibly feel towards that set of circumstances. That way when the crisis actually happens, your mood more resembles "Well I guess I'd better brush my teeth before bed" than "Oh fuck we're gonna die!" Make it feel routine, and then you won't lose your head when the pressure is on.

That was the theory anyways. We'll come back to this later now that I'm done building dramatic tension for it, because the actual talent show didn't happen until the end of the day. The rehearsal/audition portion was in the morning, so of course I went to that. I was glad that I previously had a chance to practice my guard skullduggery, because that's basically what it took to become a late-game entry. I encountered the host of the show BCBreakaway at the practice run and asked if I could just roll up on the whole thing with no notice. He said I had to register before I could perform. "So, does... right now work?"
"Sure, let me get your information down and we'll see what you've got."
I figured it would be a process like that. There's only so much order that one can impose on furries, so people with strict, constructionist interpretations of the rules are fairly rare. I ran through my bit real quick, and I was in.

I proceeded after that to charity Dungeons and Dragons, which was a delightfully insane romp that represented exactly the sort of nonsense one would expect if they put a bunch of furries in charge of saving the world. I really enjoyed the way that everyone's characters reflected the unique proclivities of their characters. Serathin was of course, always turning into things, extending to changing into his fursuit to "get into character" for the role he was playing. For the good of all that is holy I will not even discuss the unfathomable horrors that they had to perpetrate in order to overcome the truly menacing "Carbohydrake". This year was Canadian-themed, so it was a dragon made of pancakes and maple syrup. In the end they managed to prevail and nobody died (permanently) so we're calling it a win.

I filled in some of the rest of the time with Jackbox party games, wherein I met a Tiger called Funyuns and the enigmatic Victor Dragoat, whose name turns up absolutely no results, even on Google. It was a struggle to dig up his info, I'll tell ya that much. I hope he appreciates the effort that I went through to name-drop him. Hi Victor! Quipfur was a little poorly attended, but it was still a good time. It was mostly everybody making fun of Firr, but that's always a good time so I could hardly object. Serathin had been a host for all three of those events, and was basically dead on his feet by then, but was still a good sport about the whole thing.

By this point I was noticing that I was running out of CarryOn business cards. I'd been conscripted to advertise for the comic and the author had furnished me with a badge of my character in the strip and some cards to hand out to interested folk. Burying con tables in business cards is common practice at cons, but I was thinking that it would work better if I worked my pitch into conversation instead. The reality was rather the inverse of what I expected actually. Not much working it into conversation, really. The people who I talked about it with all already knew about the comic. To my surprise those business cards quite reliably disappeared from the tables I left them at. I had to go back and restock because I hadn't put enough in my wallet a couple times. I've always seen people leaving cards and ads on tables, but I would always see the pile just grow steadily throughout the con, so I never thought much of the effectiveness of the practice. Apparently some people do indeed take notice. I've only got five or so left, so a fair number of people were interested enough at least to take the card with them. So if anybody's considering that as an advertising vector, I can say it'll at least get your name out there. As to the throughput on actual ROI, only time will tell.

At the end of the day, it was finally time for the talent show. Heh, I really wished I could've socialized a bit more with the other performers there, as I had a fair amount of time backstage, but I was still in "drill it a million times" mode, especially with the time limit that had been opposed on me. I do always tend to struggle with shortening things... Anyways, I'd thought to do fursuit comedy, because I've got a much more relaxed stage presence when I've got the protection of a cartoon animal to hide behind, but my suit was still about 20% water and I had no way to dry it, so that wasn't happening. That's what my bit sprang from actually. Talking about why it is that fursuits make it easier to get up in front of people and perform, and what the process of learning about that was like.

Maybe I'll put up the whole set (or what I yet remember of it) later. I'd hoped to find a video of the talent show online somewhere, but even in the cartoonishly long delay that it's taken me to write this journal, none has turned up, so it looks like I'll have to remember it myself. It was a good show, I like to think. I figured that trying out that sort of thing at a small con would be a good stepping stone for me. Then of course I got up there and there were a LOT of people in the crowd. Seeing the room later with the house lights up made me realize there were even more than I thought. So yeah, I guess it was fitting that I came up with a panic-proof drill and a set that was about social anxiety. I feel like that aspect really resonated with the audience. The other host of the show said that she definitely understood where I was coming from. The furries are most certainly a weird and anxious people, and that is why they are my people.

Anyways, right after the show ended was closing ceremonies. Numbers all were promising, and it seemed like everybody had a good time. Serathin's endless slaving away netted him a spot as guest of honor next year. Just goes to prove that the only reward for hard work is more hard work! A lengthy charity auction had right-shifted the whole schedule a bit, moving back both the talent show and closing ceremonies. It seemed a shame to just run off, but I had to work on Monday and the current projection had me arriving a fair bit into that day. The complications of cramming a con into a regular weekend made themselves known right then. So I said a few quick goodbyes and I was on my way. Naturally I was totally dead that day at work, but I managed to get it together in time for the first NRC exam, so all was well.

Alright, final thoughts on IFC then. I may have attended this con just because circumstances changed such as to favor my attendance, sure. The qualifications schedule that I'm going to be on for the next year or two is REALLY tight. That means no breaks for fun stuff. Next year I'm going to be booked up for FC, BLFC, DenFur, Furthemore... hell it would be quicker to list the cons that this training plan wouldn't cover up. I may have been shoved into IFC by circumstance, but I'm glad that I went. It's got the small-con atmosphere to it, but it brings enough experience and talent to the table to have a lot of big-con fun. I definitely agree with Draggor, in his assessment that "secondary events is really the place to be". That opinion was borne out by basically every event that I went to there. The second stage really embodied the con's practice of letting events unravel themselves in the best possible way. Not really sticking to the schedule, the hosts not having control of everything, an unruly audience stealing the show, they're all things that can doom a performance, but a lot of the second stage events really made it part of the charm. I love that they don't have that dogmatic adherence to the "things we have to do" and "the way we're supposed to do it" that you see some places. We're not supposed to do any of this any particular way. I think people can get wrapped up in the work (and staffing is a lot of work mind you) and forget that we're here to have fun, and fun often happens in strange and unexpected ways. The easy-going roll-with-it attitude really makes for a fun weekend getaway, and definitely keeps my time from becoming so booked solid that I run myself into the ground in the course of the thing.

The other big thing I noticed was that I knew fucking nobody there. Yes, of course it's not literally zero. I ran into Kiba straight out of the gate after all. It certainly felt like a completely different crowd though. Yeah sure, a lot of the headliners were familiar, but that's because they do all the cons ever. The attendance may have all been from another country for all the connection that I had to them. I'd gotten complacent having built up a good social base over the years, so it was jarring to try and go back to the "crowd-surf a huge wave of strangers" style that I had back in the day. I was a bit out of practice with that sort of thing. I guess it fairly well demonstrates the fact that I've been to a whole bunch of east coast cons and a fair selection of west coast ones, but only a tiny scattering of middle coast ones. Watching footage of the fursuit parade really brought it home for me. I don't think I could've named any of those guys, at least none that I hadn't met for the first time that weekend. Ah well, I've gotta get used to my new digs sometime, and this is as good a way to start as any. With basically anything that I'd have to fly to off the list for 2019, I damn well better get used to hanging out with the local crowd or this will be a really tough year. And really, these guys can cultivate a great vibe and put on a really fun show. I'm sure there are plenty of new friends out there that could contribute to many good times to come.